Martha Quinn: Will this tour help you reach a new generation? Bob Dylan: I don’t reach anybody. They find me. They find me. It’s not for me to go out and reach
somebody. If they can find me, they find me, and if they don’t, they don’t. That’s the
way it’s always been. I don’t think it’s gonna change now just because I’m such an old
man and it’s nineteen-eighty… what is it?
– Martha Quinn interview for MTV, backstage Wembley Stadium, 7 July 1984
Highway 61 Revisited (video from Wembley, London – Real Live performance):
Man thinks ’cause he rules the earth he can do with it as he please
And if things don’t change soon, he will
Oh, man has invented his doom
First step was touching the moon
Now, there’s a woman on my block
She just sit there as the night grows still
She say who gonna take away his license to kill?
Sportpaleis Ahoy Rotterdam, The Netherlands 6 June 1984
Bob Dylan in Verona, May 1984. Photo by Heinrich Klaffs
“There must be some way out of here,” said the joker to the thief
“There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth”
Lou Reed – Full Concert
Recorded Live: 9/25/1984 – Capitol Theatre (Passaic, NJ)
There have been a great bootleg in circulation from this show (but in wrong running order) and the guys at Music Vault have been so kind to give us some tremendous video footage (in the right running order as far as I can tell) from the show. A very fine concert indeed!
Personnel:
Lou Reed – Vocals, Guitar
Robert Quine – Guitar
Fernando Saunders – Bass, Vocals
Peter Wood – Keyboards
Lenny Ferarri – Drums
June 4: Bruce Springsteen released Born in the USA in 1984
Born down in a dead man’s town The first kick I took was when I hit the ground You end up like a dog that’s been beat too much ‘Til you spend half your life just covering up
Born in the U.S.A. is the seventh studio album by Bruce Springsteen, it was released on June 4, 1984. A critical and commercial triumph, it found Springsteen marking a departure in his sound.
While the predecessor, the dark and acoustic Nebraska featured songs of pessimism and isolation, Born in the U.S.A.’s lyrics expressed signs of hope in the daily fight of the standard American in following the American Dream, a new feeling complemented by synthesized arrangements and a pop-flavored, radio-oriented sound that helped Springsteen to extend his popularity and appeal to mainstream audiences.
Born in the USA (Live Paris, 1985):
Ronald Reagan, during his 1984 re-election campaign, tried to coast on the rising popularity of Bruce Springsteen and Born in the U.S.A. :
“America’s future rests in a thousand dreams inside our hearts,” Reagan said at a stump speech in Hammonton, New Jersey. “It rests in the message of hope in the songs of a man so many young Americans admire: New Jersey’s own Bruce Springsteen.”
Has a song ever been so misunderstood? Maybe if he heard the following version he would have hesitated…
